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Sessions 1+2

Rethink Europe 1+2

The following sessions include a keynote as well as a conversation with the audience. Everybody is invited to share experiences, solutions or objections. A team of moderators uses „dynamic facilitation“ to promote the process, to bring the different topics together and to put them in context:

Session 1 - Venue: FORUM STADTPARK, ground floor

The Extreme Right in Europe

Today´s far-right wants to disguise itself by pretending to be defenders of democracy and liberality. The concepts of the enemy get readjusted. The old racism and even older antisemitism get updated. Putting national antagonisms on the back seat, they close ranks against the common enemy. The extreme right in Europe turns into an European extreme right.

This development is fostered by the neoliberal devastation of the social: by excluding more and more domains from democratic processes and redefining them as inherent necessities, the ruling politics breeds antidemocratic attitudes. The threat is enhanced by an EU, which is politically and institutionally unable to confront the shift to the far-right. In fact due to its structural shortcomings it is a part of the problem.

In capitalist societies economic growth is considered essential. Growth is the main objective of public economic policy. It is regarded as a basic requirement for a prospering economy and for the stability of societies. But today we´re not just in the midst of a structural crisis of capitalism as a world-economic system, from which there is no way back to the growth constellation before the crisis of 2007/2008. At the same time we face a deep crisis of capitalism as a world-ecological system - a crisis which for the first time truly connects the future of all people inhabiting this planet.

Could a “Green Capitalism” be the way out? Could a mix of promoting renewable energies, accelerated technological transformation and calls for lifestyle changes really stop the “war against the earth”? There is reason for doubt.